


Glacial Silence in the Coach

by ERNest



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Awkwardness, Gen, Injury, Small Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 15:45:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11947425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: Javert has somehow promised to bring a wounded Marius to his grandfather's home, but there's an entire carriage ride for he and Jean Valjean to suffer through first. This... is their story.





	Glacial Silence in the Coach

     At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood fell from Marius’s hair. Apart from that faint whisper of mortality, silence reigned. Jean Valjean, feeling rather like a specter, looked at the great statue of a man sitting beside him, and thought that the small sounds of the carriage made the silence even worse.  
  
     “Sooo…” he said, but then found himself at a loss for anything he could say to the Inspector. For years they had intruded on one another’s lives at crucial turning points, and now they faced the same direction with a common goal. How could he formulate a question not tinged with antagonism, or even a neutral statement?  
  
     “Indeed,” murmured Javert, in much the same tones he had used when he looked at the man asking for permission to blow his brains out, and indicated his assent. After another long moment filled only with the creaking of wheels, he added, “Do you… have any pets?”  
  
     A flash of lamplight illuminated the three men within the box. “I. As a matter of fact, no.” Though Jean Valjean had been the first to speak, he was startled to hear his attempt at conversation returned. It was only fitting, he reasoned, that two men used to being the hunter and the hunted should only land upon the most banal topics, and so he fumbled on. “I might have, but I move around too often, and that wouldn’t be fair to the animal. My daughter always wanted—” Abruptly he shut his mouth. He may have arrived at some sort of truce with this Dark Michael — though even that was far from certain — but his every instinct warned him not to say too much to this man who belonged to nothing if not to the police. Anything with the possibility of endangering Cosette was something to be feared. “What about you?”  
  
     “No, certainly not,” Javert said, almost with a hint of laughter. “Animals are a distraction at best, a hazard at worst, and require far too much work and affection from a person.”  
  
     “Almost, dare I say it, love,” he answered gently, smiling at the indignant way Javert stiffened at the word.  
  
     “I would call it rank disorder,” he snapped, “but do as you will.”  
  
     “Fine. I will!” He pulled aside the curtain so he would neither need to make eye contact with this man, nor look at the nearly dead boy he had rescued. “We must be nearly there.”  
  
     Once more the two lapsed into a silence that grew until it was oppressive. Jean Valjean cast about for something they could discuss that wouldn’t be too silly to hear from the lips of such a fearsome man. Javert hardly seemed a man at all; he had always been an extension of the long arm of the law, and it was difficult for the ex-con to think of him any other way. This may be why the question that rose to his lips next was “Made any good arrests lately?”  
  
     In the next flare of light that suffused the air, he saw the inspector’s hand gripping his leg so tight the fingernails almost tore the fabric of his pants. To understand why, we must take a closer look at that man’s tortured soul. As far as he could see, Jean Valjean was little more than a criminal who had stolen undeserved freedom for himself, and then took it upon himself to dispense that false liberty to anyone around him. It had been bad enough to see a prostitute go free on that man’s orders, and worse for a petty thief to be released on the testimony of the man he’d been correct to suspect in the first place. But to have an escape route presented to him under the name of mercy, that was an indignity that could not be borne! There was no mercy under the law, and anything that claimed to be could only be folly.  
  
     He’d always planned to find Jean Valjean again and arrest him once and for all, yet now that he’d been delivered right into his lap, Javert could not help remembering the debt he owed, and he now found himself wanting to repay it. So at that insolent question, “made any good arrests lately?” Javert had to pull back on the leash of the legal tiger within him all over again. To keep from telling the driver to take them to the nearest police station would satisfy his personal honor, but because that course had nothing to do with legal honor, it took all his strength to stick to it.  
  
     He’d never had to make a decision before, and it was tearing him apart. In the past there were choices to be made concerning interrogations, or the proper time to interrupt a criminal undertaking, but that was different. Those were mere pebbles on the straight road of justice, and just as at Waterloo, it had rained the night before, which was enough for the collapse of a world. To have two possible paths, equally correct and just as equally wrong, was an unknown experience. He’d never been frightened in his life, but this was what he thought it might be.  
  
     Just as he had no map for his hours of subterranean purgatory, Jean Valjean was not privy to the thoughts racing through his captor’s mind. Still, he’d survived this long because he understood that much of escape relied on reading the people around him.  
  
     “Sore subject then?” he ventured, but if he expected an answer he was disappointed. “Sorry,” he muttered, no longer caring about a response.  
  
     After this Javert seemed to relax incrementally as far as Jean Valjean could see when his greatcoat remained buttoned to his chin. He’d barely even moved except for his fingers, which now merely rested on his leg. A slightly less grotesque statue, then, but even the short glance Jean Valjean dared was too much, too intimate. Marius’s deathlike pallor was easier to handle.  
  
     The fiacre rumbled on through the night and at length Javert’s voice rumbled in echo. “I do my work well, you know,” he said, and it would have been petulant coming from anyone else; here it was a threat. “I don’t expect one such as _you_ to understand, but the Law is everything. I have always respected it and I will not be mocked for it, do you hear?”  
  
     Jean Valjean had not intended any disrespect, much less mockery, but such an explanation could only sound insincere. He bowed his head in mute acceptance of blame he only mostly deserved and lapsed into a gloomy reflection.


End file.
